John William Baier's
_Compendium of Positive Theology_
Edited by C. F. W. Walther
Published by:
St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1877
[Translator's Preface. These are the major loci or topics of
John William Baier's _Compendium of Positive Theology_ as ed-
ited by Dr. C. F. W. Walther. These should be seen as the
broad outline of Baier-Walther's dogmatics, but please don't
assume that this is all. Each locus usually includes copious
explanatory notes and citations from patristics and other
Lutheran dogmaticians.]
Part One, Chapter 8
On temporal death.
1. Because the highest or ultimate blessedness is not in this life,
but in another life, and similarly the opposing highest misery
happens at length after this life, these things apply now being
clearly seen according to divine revelation to those things which
happen at the end of this life and at the entering into the
following life or state.
2. And indeed death is seen first, which is a privation from the
natural life of humans, resulting from the breaking up of soul and
body.
3. The efficient cause of death in itself and properly speaking is
not given.
4. Among the moral causes of death at first is numbered the devil,
in so far as by his persuasion he led Eve to sin and thus attracted
those and the allies of sins to the accursed state of death.
5. Thereafter the first people, not only for themselves but also
for the following ones, are rightly said to be the cause of death;
indeed Eve, in so far as not only herself sinned, being obedient to
the persuading demon, but also she enticed Adam to the fellowship
of sin, and to such an extent attracted the condition of death to
herself and to Adam; truly Adam, obeying his wife and violating the
law of God, not only he himself underwent the necessity of death,
but also all those who descended from him according to nature also
underwent sin and death; thus also he was a cause of death.
6. However, God is not a cause of death, unless in so far as a
just judge prohibiting to the first parents on account of their
neglect the gift of immortality and he carried out severe threats
and thus subjected humans to death, which they deserved.
7. The internal impulsive cause of death on the part of Satan is
his highest hatred toward God and humans; however on the part of
God the internal impelling cause is his vengeful justice, the
external impulsive cause is the fall of the first people.
8. Otherwise, if we look at peculiar examples of death, the moral
cause of death varies greatly, and the cause is sometimes the dying
themselves, otherwise other humans, and the spirits good and bad
are established as the moral cause, sometimes dying humans and
others, strong and at the same time the spirits agreeing; from
which also it is seen that the impulsive cause has a manifold
source.
9. The physical causes of death are divided into natural,
praeternatural, and violent.
10. The natural cause of death is a radical consuming of the humid
principals of life and an annihilation of the warm principals of
life, out of these first qualities gradually turning into the
succeeding thing.
11. To the preternatural cause of death pertains the more vehement
deaths, by which likewise the native heat with the root humidity is
extinguished, but from causes beyond nature.
12. External things are referred to violent causes, by which such a
power is simply introduced to the body, or to the more noble parts
of the body or the things necessary to life, by which powers the
nutrition of the blood and the generation and distribution of the
spirit are hindered or elevated.
13. The subject of death are humans, not only the first ones after
the fall, but also all the rest, born from those by fleshly
generation.
14. The final cause of death on the part of Satan is the satisfying
of the hatred towards God and humans; on the part of God truly the
goal of death seen in itself is the punishing of sin, and also a
declaration of divine justice.
15. The fact of the separation of soul and body, so far as it
concerns death, is true, however the spirit remains present and in
its operations outside the body is working by itself.
16. On the contrary, we believe that the souls of the pious at once,
after they are separated from the body, follow to essential
blessedness while the souls of the impious undergo their
condemnation.
17. The bodies of humans deprived of life on earth with honor, but
endlessly without the light, are also put away by rites, as in the
same place they are loosened into ashes, unless the antecedent
crimes of the dead lead to a place of punishment or the bodies left
behind by them are unburied, or at least they ought to be buried
without honor.
18. It is possible to describe temporal death as a privation of
spiritual life, from the dissolving of soul and body, through the
sin of the first parents, hostilely instigated by Satan, who
fathered death, appearing by the just judging of God, and undergone
by all humans necessarily by nature, to the glory of divine justice.
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This text was translated by Rev. Theodore Mayes and is copyrighted
material, (c)1996, but is free for non-commercial use or distribu-
tion, and especially for use on Project Wittenberg. Please direct
any comments or suggestions to: Rev. Robert E. Smith of the Walther
Library at Concordia Theological Seminary.
E-mail: smithre@mail.ctsfw.edu
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Phone: (260) 452-2123 Fax: (260) 452-2126
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